Estate Planning
STEP 1: The Exploration Method
Our Exploration Method focuses on a thorough examination of your estate planning needs. During this step, we take the time to deeply understand your unique situation and goals. We explore various strategies and options to create a personalized estate plan that fits your family’s needs. This method ensures that you have a clear and comprehensive plan in place, providing peace of mind and confidence in your future.
STEP 2: The Strategy Solution
In the Strategy Solution step, we design your estate plan based on the insights gathered during the Exploration Method. We will discuss and finalize the strategies and options that best meet your goals. This step is crucial for ensuring that your plan is aligned with your needs before any documents are drafted. This meeting is often combined with the Exploration Method for efficiency.
STEP 3: The Commitment Process
The Commitment Process typically lasts between 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the number of questions and the extent of our review beforehand. In this step, you finalize your estate plan by signing the documents. For up to 90 days after signing, you can make a 1-3 page amendment at no additional charge, providing flexibility and assurance that your plan meets your expectations.
STEP 4: The Asset Integration Method
The Asset Integration Method is an ongoing process that begins after you sign your plan documents and often takes days, weeks, or even months to implement. Properly integrating your assets into your estate plan is essential, and this method ensures your trust is fully funded. You can choose to handle this process entirely on your own, have us manage it for you, or work together for a collaborative approach.
Conclusion
Many of our clients find that they can complete both The Exploration Method and The Strategy Solution steps in one comprehensive meeting. This efficient process allows you to thoroughly understand your estate planning options and finalize your plan’s design in a single session. However, the Commitment Process, where you sign your documents, will always occur on a separate day to ensure thorough preparation and understanding.
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Can you answer the following questions with absolute certainty?
- Who will make your health care decisions if you are unable to make them?
- Do you know what would happen legally – to you, your loved ones, your money – if something unexpected happened to you?
- Who will sign legal documents for you if you are ill, incompetent or unable?
- Will your doctors follow your wishes regarding end of life care?
- Who will be granted custody of your minor children?
- Who will receive your assets when you die?
Estate Planning is one way to remove any uncertainty to your answers. Through a series of documents, you will ensure that your wishes are memorialized in a legally sufficient and binding way.
Estate Planning is one way for you to take charge of your future by documenting your financial assets and health care choices while you are able. Estate planning is not only for the elderly or the wealthy, it is for anyone who wishes to make legally effective choices. Incorporating a trust, or series of trusts, into your estate plan offers a number of benefits including but not limited to: avoiding expensive estate administration (probate), avoiding federal estate taxes, and protecting your beneficiaries’ future interests from creditors.
6 things a basic estate plan should provide for:
- Memorialize your decision regarding how your assets will be distributed at your death with a Last Will and Testament.
- Authorize a designated person to execute legal documents on your behalf if you are unable with a Durable Power of Attorney.
- Memorialize your decisions regarding end of life medical care with a Living Will.
- Authorize a designated person to make health care decisions for you if you are unable with a Designation of Health Care Surrogate.
- Memorialize your choices for guardianship of you, your assets, and your children with a Declaration of Pre-Need Guardian.
- Authorize medical personnel to release information regarding your health to designated person with a Medical Records Privacy Waiver (HIPAA release).
Even if you don’t have an estate plan, Florida has a plan for you.
To do this, we conduct an estate planning session, where we spend time together and you’ll get informed. Before your planning session, you will complete an inventory and assessment, which will help you to get clear about what you own and what you have to think about when it comes to planning for the well-being and care of your loved ones and loved belongings. If you decide the current state of affairs is unacceptable, and if we both decide that it’s a fit to work together, then we can design an estate plan together that will best suit the needs of your family.
The foundation of your estate plan will often include a revocable living trust. You transfer your property into this trust for your benefit during your life. One of the benefits of a revocable living trust is that when done correctly and maintained over time, your estate plan should help your family to avoid the cost and delay of probate and minimize or eliminate estate taxes.
For people with additional needs, we provide advanced estate planning services.
I will take the time to get to know you, your family, your concerns, your goals and your issues and will gladly and patiently answer all your questions to produce an estate plan that is exactly right for you.
If you are a family with young children, then your estate plan should begin with a foundation that ensures your children would always be taken care of, no matter what happens.
What Would Happen to Your Kids if the Unthinkable Happened to You?
Of those who have, most have made one of 6 common mistakes most parents (and their lawyers!) make when naming guardians.
Don’t let this happen to your family!
Without proper planning, if the unthinkable happens to you, here’s a few things that could happen:
- Your children could be placed into child protective services with the Department of Children and Families (DCF), even if you have a will in place, and even if you have a living trust;
- A Judge who doesn’t know you, or your family, will decide who will raise your kids, even if it’s the last person you would ever want;
- Approximately 5% of the total value of your assets could be lost due to probate, a court process that can tie up your assets for months or years and deprive your kids of the resources they need to live comfortably; and
- When your kids turn 18, they get a check for whatever assets are left (and there are unscrupulous people who make it their business to review public records to find out what 18 year olds are coming into money)
The vast majority of estate planning attorneys do not address these issues, and do not plan from a parents perspective; Our goal is to make sure these things don’t happen!
That’s why we offer a children protection plan with every estate plan we do for families with young children. If you are a family with young children, then your estate plan should begin with a foundation that ensures your children would always be taken care of no matter what happens.
Below is a list of the documents we can prepare for you.
Will & Trust
- Basic Will
- Basic Revocable Living Trust
- Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust
- 2503(c) Minor’s Trust
- Health and Education Exclusion Trust
- Intentionally Defective Grantor Trust
- Beneficiary Defective Inheritor’s Trust
- Sale to Intentionally Defective Grantor
Trust Documents
- Lifetime Qualified Terminable Interest Property Trust (QTIP)
- Qualified Personal Residence Trust
- Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs)
- Grantor Remainder Unitrusts (GRUTs)
- And Accompanying Ancillary Documents
Asset Protection
- Special Needs Trust
- State Specific (Delaware, Alaska, South Dakota and Nevada) Asset Protection Trusts
- Family Limited Partnerships
- Limited Liability Companies
- And Accompanying Ancillary Documents
Charitable Planning
- Charitable Remainder Trusts
- Charitable Lead Trusts
- Gift Annuity Agreements
- Life Estate Deeds and Agreements
- Private Foundation Trusts
- Private Foundation Corporations
- Gift Agreements
- And Accompanying Ancillary Documents
Retirement
- Stand Alone Retirement Trusts
- Customized Beneficiary Designations
- And Accompanying Ancillary Documents
Get Started with Estate Planning
Getting Started with our Estate Planning Services.
To schedule a meeting at the most convenient time for you, either click the “Make an Appointment” button to the right, or call our office. We see clients Monday through Friday, by appointment only. We can also accommodate you by phone after normal business hours or on a Saturday, by special request. If you are unable to come to our office an attorney will meet you at your home or office. Our goal is to make the process as simple and convenient as possible for you.
Before Your Personal Estate Planning Consultation.
If you are looking for an estate planning attorney in Naples, please complete the form linked to below online and be sure to submit it at least three days before your initial meeting. You may also download a copy of the form and submit it to us by mail, fax, electronic mail, or in-person. Please call us if you need assistance completing your worksheet or have any questions. If you have existing estate planning documents, please make sure we have them in our office at least a week before we meet so that we can review them in advance, if applicable.
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Disclaimer: The information you obtain at this site is not, nor is it intended to be, legal advice. You should consult an attorney for advice regarding your individual situation. We invite you to contact us and welcome your calls, letters, and electronic mail. Contacting us does not create an attorney-client relationship, a duly executed fee agreement with Goodwin Law, P.A. is required.